Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 LicenseWilson, StuartBassiou, EvangeliaDenli, AyselDolan, Lynsey C.Watson, Matthew2018-10-172018-10-172018-08-02Wilson, S., Bassiou, E., Denli, A., Dolan, L. C. and Watson, M. (2018) Traveling groups stick together: How collective directional movement influences social cohesion. Evolutionary Psychology, 16 (3).1474-7049https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/8995http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1474704918792134Acknowledgments: Thanks are due to Joanne Fox, Jamal Mansour, Maria Ioanna Michailidou, and Tuntiak Karakras Murray.Stuart Wilson - ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2119-5209We tested the hypothesis that the social act of moving through space with others - collective directional movement - is associated with greater levels of group cohesion compared to static activities. We asked participants to imagine participating in activities as part of a same-sex group and found that imagining going on a journey is associated with higher levels of expected cohesion compared to imagining attending a meeting (Study 1) or an event (Study 2). Study 3 replicates the main effect using different manipulations and finds that it persists regardless of whether the imagined group were friends or strangers. Two further studies employed real-world tasks and show that the effect is not a consequence of goal ascription (Study 4) or synchrony/exertion (Study 5). We argue that the link between this activity and cohesion is a consequence of its ubiquity in social ecologies and the interdependence and shared common fate of those engaged in it.enThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).© The Author(s) 2018http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Group CohesionTravel PsychologyBehavioral SynchronyCollective MovementsDirectional MovementArticle